Related articles

In this month's issue

Taste.com.au - March 2013
Eat in, eat out, eat well. Look for the taste liftout on Tuesdays in the Herald Sun, Courier Mail and Daily Telegraph, on Wednesdays in the Adelaide Advertiser, and in Perth’s Sunday Times.

Easter's favourite fruity treat is easy to make at home with these tips from three top bakers, writes Grant Jones.

The spicy, sweet aroma coming from the oven is irresistible, well before the buns are taken out, cut in half and slathered with butter.

In Australia, we love the classic bun with cinnamon, nutmeg and currants in the mix. But buns flavoured with cocoa and choc chips are making inroads, as are some variations using mixed fruit, toffee, orange and cranberry, and apple and cinnamon.

"I think you have to start with the right recipe," says Ben Dullo from Bakers Delight, which has been offering hot cross buns for the past 33 years.

Ben has worked with the same ingredients for more than decade, after spending years perfecting his recipe.

Daniel Chirico, from Melbourne's Baker D. Chirico, has queues of people lining up for his traditional hot cross buns with a little twist.

"We've been doing them for 12 years. I think the first four years we did them, they were good, but we changed the recipe each year, and by about the fourth or fifth year we got it right," he says.

"We start making them at the start of the month and we finish on Easter Sunday. By Easter week we make about 10,000, or thereabouts and they are pretty much done by hand, so it's pretty gruelling."

Dough

A hot cross bun is basically spiced bread.

"We use all organic white strong baker's flour," says Daniel of the beginnings of his hot cross bun. He then uses his own starter – a fermented mix of ingredients used by bakers to kickstart their dough – but says for the home cook brewer's yeast (a fresh yeast) can now be bought at delis or supermarkets. It's just a liquid version of the more commonly used powdered yeast.

She uses a mixer to combine the ingredients and says the resulting dough must have a shine to it as that indicates the gluten strands have been stretched enough.

While her own bun dough is proved in a special machine, she suggests at home, you keep the dough in a mixing bowl and place that inside a plastic bag to prove until it has almost-but-not quite doubled. Make sure it is not near a draught because cold kills the living yeast. Leanne then kneads it on a table for about 10 minutes for elasticity and to "stretch" the gluten in the dough.

Ben says the temperature has to be just right for making buns – not too hot, not too cold, not too humid.

Daniel proves his main dough for three hours. "At home if you are using a commercial yeast, you just wait until it doubles in size, about an hour," he says.

Spices

While cinnamon and nutmeg are the most common spices used in hot cross buns, there's no reason why you can't experiment. In the batch Leanne makes for taste, she uses five-spice.

Daniel has "the usual suspects, cinnamon and nutmeg, plus a little bit of cardamom as well," he says. "What makes our buns a bit unique is we use a whole orange puree and a whole ginger puree."

Fruitful

In Europe, fresh fruit was hard to come by so bakers traditionally used dried fruits.

"...We use Australian currants and sultanas," says Daniel. "We don't have to presoak anything, because our dough is quite wet. But if you are doing it domestically, I would be pre-soaking the fruit in just a little bit of water."

Size matters

Daniel's dough is divided in 14 pieces of 100g that are rounded into a ball and placed on a tray about 1cm apart, so when they prove again, they will touch each other.

Leanne's dough is measured out in 120g lots, and also placed about 1cm apart, on baking paper on a tray.

The cross

The Easter bun cross is a symbol of the crucifixion of Christ. For his cross mix, Daniel uses sifted self-raising flour, the same amount of water, plus an extra 10 per cent. For example 100g of flour and 110g of water, plus a tablespoon olive oil or canola oil.

Baking time

What you want to achieve is a crunchy dough and chewy centre, so oven temperature and timing counts.

"It's between 20 and 25 minutes, probably the same at home in a 220C oven," says Daniel. Leanne's are cooked for 35 minutes at 180C in a commercial oven. "But at home, I'd start out at 220C to get that nice crust on top and then turn down to 180C after 15 minutes," she says. After baking, Leanne taps the bottom of a hot cross bun and if it sounds hollows, she knows they are cooked.

Glaze

The glaze is added after baking to give the buns shine.

"We use a one-to-one sugar syrup. You want to highlight the spices in the bun, so I don't add any flavour," says Daniel.

Leanne uses a glaze of equal amounts of melted sugar and honey with a split vanilla bean.

Eating them

"I like eating them pretty fresh – not hot – a few hours after baking because you want to taste the spices, with some French butter or good Aussie artisan butter," Daniel says.

Ben, after baking tens of thousands of hot cross buns over the years, likes his served straight out of the oven, with lashings of butter.